Reading back over this, it sounds pretty lame. If being a sometime whore and a bad mother were capital offenses, there would be a whole lot more orphans in this world. Bad as she was, Serena didn’t deserve to die. However, I for one remain unconvinced that Jorge did it. All I can go by is the fact that he never raised either his hand or his voice under circumstances when a lot of men would have.
Thoughtfully, Joanna folded Butch Dixon’s handwritten pages and returned them to her purse. She knew that the way a man behaved toward a woman in a roomful of witnesses wasn’t necessarily an indication of how he would behave in private. By his own admission, there was at least one domestic violence charge on Jorge Grijalva’s rap sheet.
But in other respects, Butch’s observations and Jorge Grijalva came surprisingly close to Joanna own conclusions. Jorge despised Serena for her whoring and yet he hadn’t been able to let her go, hadn’t been able to stop caring.
The picture of Serena that emerged in the bartender’s story was far different from and more complex than the impression of near sainthood that had been part of the revivallike atmosphere at MAVEN’s candlelight vigil. There Serena had been cast as a beautiful, helpless, and blameless martyr to motherhood and apple pie. Butch Dixon’s vision conceded her beauty, but saw her as a troubled, manipulative young woman, as a chronically unfaithful wife, and as a less than adequate mother.
Butch’s essay stopped one step short of holding the dead woman partially responsible for her own murder. His sympathetic portrayal of Jorge was compelling. It played on Joanna’s emotions in exactly the same way the testimonies of the various survivors had caught up the feelings of all the attendees at the vigil. Sitting there reflecting, Joan could see why. Dixon’s editorializing on Jorge’s behalf would be of no more help to a homicide detective than the blatantly emotional blackmail of MAVEN’s dog-and-pony show. Both in their own right were convincing pieces of show business—full of sound and fury and not much else.
Joanna shook her head. MAVEN could rail that Jorge Grijalva was evil incarnate and his deceased wife a candidate for sainthood. Butch Dixon cool tell the world that Serena Grijalva was a conniving bitch. Depending on your point of view, both were victims.
For Joanna, the real victims were the kids who seemed destined to endure one terrible loss after another. And if the plea bargain ...
“Mom, we’re here!” Jenny crowed from the open doorway.
Lost in thought, Joanna hadn’t even noticed when Jim Bob Brady’s aging Honda Accord pulled to a stop under the portico. Joanna rose to greet her visitors. Jenny met her halfway across the room, tackling Joanna and latching onto her waist with such force that it almost knocked her down.
“Wait a minute,” Joanna said. “You don’t have to be that glad to see me.”
Bending to kiss the top of Jenny’s head, Joanna stopped short. One look at Jenny’s hair was enough to take her breath away. The smooth, long blond
tresses were gone. In their place stood a fuzzy white Little Orphan Annie halo, a brittle, tow?headed Afro. Jenny’s assessment on the telephone had been absolutely right—her hair was awful. Joanna swallowed the urge to say what she was thinking.
“I missed you, sweetie,” she said. “How are you doing? How was the trip?”
“The trip was fine, and I missed you, too,” Jenny said breathlessly. “But is the pool still open? Is it too late to go swimming?”
So much for missing me, Joanna thought wryly. She glanced at her watch. “The pool doesn’t close for almost two hours yet, but don’t you want something to eat first?”
“We ate in the car,” Jenny answered. “Anyway, I’d rather swim.”
“Go help Grandpa with your luggage first,” Joanna urged. “Then we’ll talk about it. You need to check with the desk and order your videos.”
